Visa Subsidiary Cuts Ties with Nation's Largest Gun Shop

Hyatt Gun Shop states that a subsidiary of Visa shut down payments for its customers’ online gun purchases, effectively cutting ties with “the nation’s largest gun store,” Hyatt claims, because of legal online gun sales.

Hyatt Gun Shop is located in Charlotte, NC, and owner Larry Hyatt says Authorize.net–described on its website as “a solution of Cybersource, a wholly owned subsidiary of Visa”–sent him an email saying they were ending their business relationship with his store over “the sale of firearms or any similar product.”

Hyatt’s marketing director Justin Anderson said, “We’ve never seen anything like this.” He said that when the gun store started their relationship with the financial firm, it was only after spending weeks and thousands of dollars “to line up a ‘gun friendly’ credit card processor for online sales.” And after believing they had secured such a processor, the rug is now being pulled out from under them.

It is important to note that online gun sales at Hyatt Gun Shop require a background check. As with any gun store that sells guns online, after an individual buys a gun from Hyatt online, that gun is sent to a Federal Firearms License (FFL) holder in the buyer’s area. The buyer then goes to that FFL and submits to a NICS background check, which he or she must pass before being allowed to take possession of the firearm.

Authorize.net was purchased by Visa in 2010, and their decision to cut ties with Hyatt Gun Shop comes on top of earlier announcements by GE Capital and payment processor Square that they too were ending business relationships with the firearm industry.